Chicago Illinois Real Estate Blog

In the year to date ending Sept. 30, single-family homes in 21 northern suburbs along the lake sold for 11 percent less than in the same period in 2007, according to the public Web site of the North Shore-Barrington Association of Realtors. In dollar signs, that’s about $98,000 less than the year before: the average closed price, year to date, was $794,699, compared with last year’s $893,061.

Real estate agents have assured that it’s generally pointless for buyers to make low-ball offers because sellers already have reduced their prices as much as they’re willing to. I’m not sure what your definition of "low-ball" is, but the data on the site reveal that in September, the average single-family home that sold went for 88 percent of its listing price—certainly, below the percentage expectations in real estate days of yore.

The real estate industry tends to be pretty tight with detailed local data, but there’s a bevy of North Shore numbers here, gleaned from the data of MRED, the multiple-listing service that serves the Chicago region. It (along with a smattering of housing numbers for Cook County and some Chicago neighborhoods) is at realtorchannel.org.
More .